A dedicated follower of fashion

He lives alone in the Carnegie Hall Tower, amid cabinets crammed with film negatives hoarded over decades. His bed is a piece of foam on a wooden board and a few milk crates; he has no private bathroom or kitchen facilities.

Bill Cunningham, the photographer who has captured New York’s most fashionable and eccentric, is something of an enigma.

Now 82, Cunningham has been shooting fashion on the streets of New York for decades; his columns The Times: On the Street and Evening Hours – his society page – are poured over by thousands of voracious fashionistas and busybodies scouting for visual gossip.

Always with his Nikon camera – he still shoots film – and his red Schwinn bicycle, Cunningham is a character. And yet he’s made a career snapping the personalities of New York, and in doing so, has captured the zeitgeist.

In 1978 everyone was sporting the Annie Hall look; in June of ’83 it was bare shoulders. September 1987 saw the denim dress rise to prominence; in May 1998 fanny packs were omnipresent.

At various times Cunningham has identified a “blizzard of pink clothing" on the streets of Manhattan or ubiquitous shades of Mediterranean blue. In early 2009 he identified what he dubbed a “new seriousness" in fashion following the Wall Street crash.

He holds a mirror to society and identifies trends; he is a fashion encyclopaedia.

Harold Koda, curator at the costume institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has said: “His photographs, rather than just paparazzi shots, are really evidence of what fashion is at any given moment in the world."

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For the last few years while Cunningham was documenting New York society, someone was documenting him.

Filmmaker Richard Press, along with The New York Times and First Thought Films, has made Bill Cunningham New York – an attempt to reveal the elusive character behind the camera.

The film took 10 years to make; eight just to convince Cunningham to be a part of it, says Press.

“Bill just can’t imagine that anyone would be interested in a movie about him. He doesn’t realise how singular he is and what he does. He doesn’t realise how important what he does is."

Press met Cunningham about 10 years ago “and probably within a couple of weeks of meeting him I said to Philip Gefter, the producer on the film, I want to make a documentary about this guy," he says. “I grew up in New York and followed his column for as long as I could remember. I had no idea who he was behind the byline."

Cunningham started photographing people on the street during World War II. He snapped them at ski resorts and he snapped them at parties, with his little box Brownie camera. His parents were never too keen on his hobby.

“I think they were worried I was becoming too interested in women’s dresses," Cunningham wrote in The Times in 2002. “I could never concentrate on Sunday church services because I’d be concentrating on women’s hats."

Cunningham moved to New York in 1948 at age 19, and began making hats under the name William J. so as not to upset his family. Millinery introduced him to Nona McAdoo Park and Sophie Meldrim Shonnard from the fashion house Chez Ninon, who would send clients to Cunningham. He began making hats for New York’s elite: the Vanderbilts, the Astors and Jackie Kennedy.

Cunningham was drafted during the Korean War. Later, in 1966, he had dinner in London with photographer David Montgomery. He mentioned he wanted to take pictures and when Montgomery came to New York a few months later he brought Cunningham an Olympus Pen-D half-frame and said, “Here, use it like a notebook."

Cunningham sees clothes rather than people: a nutria coat crossing the street one day just happened to be Greta Garbo.

“I remember one April in Paris Ball when Joe DiMaggio came with Marilyn Monroe. But I was mesmerised by Mrs T. Charlton Henry of Philadelphia," Cunningham wrote in The Times.

In the ’60s he left an Oscar de la Renta show to shoot anti-war protesters. “I knew from photographing people on the streets that the news was not in the showrooms. It was on the streets."

In Bill Cunningham New York, Press sets out to find the man behind the images. But the process of capturing Cunningham had its limitations. The photographer, who says the way he works is to make himself invisible, was reluctant to be filmed, and so Press and the crew were required to be similarly discreet.

Bill Cunningham New York is shot on handheld cameras by Press, Gefter and a Times staff photographer.

It would often take weeks for Cunningham to co-operate; it was a month before he allowed Press to fit him with a wireless mic. Once they had his trust, they would wait for him to work.

Dressed always in a blue workman’s smock, Cunningham is filmed riding through the streets of New York, from The Times offices on Eighth Avenue to the printers where he develops his film on 43rd Street. The four corners of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street – where in the past he’s snapped Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, the king and queen of Spain, and a Kennedy in a fox coat – are where he is often found, waiting for his prey.

A first-time filmmaker, Press said he began with little idea of how the film would pan out. In a way the film tracks his own relationship with Cunningham: as the photographer grew to trust him, he opened more doors into his life.

Despite his appetite for colour and flamboyancy, Cunningham has no material interests. His own clothes are simple; he wears a blue woollen jumper each day, he eats food only for sustenance, and has no romantic relationship to speak of. He goes to church every Sunday.

As the film progresses, poignant snapshots into Cunningham’s private life are revealed. We meet his neighbour, the 98-year-old artist Editta Sherman, who’s lived in Carnegie Hall since 1946; we learn about the threat of an eviction. There are darker moments juxtaposed with the wild colours of his daily life.

“There really is no story in the traditional sense so we just tried to weave an emotional arc together," says Press. “Just the fact that he let us in his apartment; I mean that didn’t happen for probably six months. Over time he started letting us into his life and we were able to ask him some personal questions.

“He’s a devout Catholic and I kind of joke he’s taken a vow of fashion. He’s devoted his life the way a priest would to religion.

“His page, his columns come out on Sunday and it’s kind of like his Sunday offerings.

“It’s kind of a religious component, as if he’s a monk and he does this one singular thing but he gets incredible joy out of it. I think that’s the key to it. He just gets complete pleasure out of it."

The film won the audience award at last year’s Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra film festivals and broke box-office records when it screened in New York. Press says audiences are intrigued by Cunningham.

“He really has figured out how to live his life in his own terms – he doesn’t want anything from anybody, he doesn’t want money, fame or material things.

“And when you’re that free, just doing what you do because you love doing it and don’t care about anything else, that is a very powerful place to be."